California Preschool Learning Foundations - ECEZero2Three ...

Vocabulary. The development of
vocabulary is one of the most essential,
observable, and robust aspects of
early language acquisition. Vocabulary
knowledge is an important language
tool that children use to access background
knowledge, express ideas, and
acquire new concepts. In addition to
providing children with a tool that
supports peer relationships and their
interactions with adults, the size of a
child’s vocabulary is itself a positive
influence on word learning. Children
who have a larger vocabulary have
an easier time acquiring new words
(Nash and Donaldson 2005; Sénéchal,
Thomas, and Monker 1995). They also
tend to be more effective readers, mastering
a wider variety of strategies to
figure out the meaning of new words
than less capable readers can (McKeown
1985), and are more proficient
in reading comprehension (Report of
the National Reading Panel 2000). On
the contrary, preschool and kindergarten
children who show difficulties
with vocabulary exhibit relatively lower
reading achievement later (Cunningham
and Stanovich 1998; Share and
others 1984; Stanovich, Cunningham,
and Freeman 1984). The differences
in vocabulary words between high and
low achievers are stable over time.
Vocabulary growth throughout early
childhood occurs at a very rapid rate.
This process continues throughout
school, where children acquire from
3,000 to 5,000 new words each academic
year, with about half of those
words learned through reading (Nagy
and Herman 1987). It is thus important
to pay attention to vocabulary
development from an early age. The
vocabulary substrand includes three
interrelated foundations: age-appropriate
vocabulary, basic concepts, and
California Department of Education • Preschool Learning Foundations, Volume 1
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vocabulary that describes relations
between objects.
Vocabulary undergoes rapid growth
during the preschool years. Many children
enter into a period termed the
“vocabulary explosion” or “word spurt”
within the second year of life (Bates,
Bretherton, and Snyder 1988). Vocabulary
acquisition is not merely adding
new words in a serial fashion to a
static and established vocabulary base.
Learning new vocabulary is a more
complex process that involves altering
and refining the semantic representation
of words already in the children’s
vocabulary base, as well as the relationships
among them (Landauer and
Dumais 1997; Woodward, Markham,
and Fitzsimmons 1994). Children’s
development of the meaning of a single
word is best viewed as a gradual process
in which word representations
progressively develop from immature,
incomplete representations to mature,
accurate representations (Justice,
Meier, and Walpole 2005). Children
often can acquire a general representation
of a new word with only a single
exposure through a process called
“fast mapping” (see McGregor and others
2002). This process is followed by
“slow mapping,” during which representations
are gradually refined over
time with multiple exposures (Curtis
1987). Thus, multiple experiences with
words across a variety of contexts are
critical for children’s acquisition of a
fine-grained representation of those
words.
An important aspect of early vocabulary
and linguistic concept development
is that of “categorization” (Hoff
2005). “Vocabulary development”
can be defined as the child’s ongoing
achievement of increasingly precise
ways of representing the contents of
LANGUAGE AND LITERACY